When did you first get into the fantabulous world of computers? What was your first very own computer?
My first computer was a Commodore 64, which is broken now, but i remember playing California Games and Rollaround on it with my father in the early 90s. Good times.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 11:14
1992, I played a dungeon game in Kindergarten every afternoon on something that looked like a Mac I think. It was probably somehow educational. I wonder how many dungeon games were around back then, I'd like to play it. All I recall is a big wooden door opening, and it was dark.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 11:41
First proper experience of computers was probably my cousin showing off his Sinclair Spectrum, that little rubber-keyed marvel that introduced practically everyone in the UK to affordable home computing. He was really into it, and had stuff like the mouse, the microdrive and the speech module. Must have been around 1985 then. My first computer was its bigger brother the Spectrum +2, which had triple the memory, an extra sound chip and a built-in tape deck and joystick ports. That was around 1987, I guess. One of the first games I got totally addicted to was Rapscallion (one of the games the guy in the shop threw in for free), where you had to escape from the castle by transforming between a bird (who could be killed by cats and spikes but was invulnerable to spiders, cobwebs and frogs) and a fly (who could fit through smaller gaps, but was susceptible to the things that wouldn't harm the bird). Amazing game. I only ever completed it once, years later, on an emulator (as I did with StarQuake, again years later on an emulator).
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Anonymous2005-12-04 12:06
Probably in school, Apple II with Logos. Actually, I still don't know if that's what it really was. At the time all I knew was you type stuff in and it did drew stuff. It was so cool when the old kids showed us how to do make it draw a line in color. Oh there was a turtle on the screen, and a apple thing on the box.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 12:21
Amstrad CPC 464+
I used to love the anticipation of waiting an hour for a program to be read in from an audio cassette.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 14:14
Amstrad PC1512 (8086 8 MHz, 512 KB RAM, 5.25" floppy, 10MB HD, color screen, DOS and some random office applications), in 1990, I was 6 back then.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 19:42
LOL UR COMPUT3RS ALL SUXXORZ CUZ MY 1ST PC WAS A 1GHZ PENTIUM YOU CAN ALL SUCK MY 14 YEAR OLD COCK AND GET REAL COMPUTERS FAGZOR NOOBS
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Anonymous2005-12-04 19:52
Packard Bell 486DX or SX, don't remember. It had 5.25" floppy. I played games like Pharaoh's Tomb. Quite good, lol. Sometimes when it didn't work, I hit it, and it would work again, but then I think I broke up. The problem now that I think about it was a loose IDE cable most likely... That was 1993,4, or 5.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 20:51
386, just added a VGA card to play King's Quest V. Later, a 486 with SVGA for SimCity2000.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 21:19
I'm pretty sure it was my dad's Atari 800. That was a great game machine and very ahead of its time, being released in 1979, though it missed out on a lot of commercial support post-crash after the C64 massively underpriced it. The machine's designer, Jay Miner, later worked on the Amiga which was also very good but like the 800 had a relatively limited lifespan before it was overtaken by the PC. It's a shame...
...but then, was it really the technology we loved, or the creativity that was imposed by those particular restrictions?
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Anonymous2005-12-04 22:01
Just another 386er here. Didn't even have Windows, just DOS 6.22. Funny thing is, aside from starting files over the floppy, I swear the computer felt faster back then than it does now.
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Anonymous2005-12-04 23:39
Atari XL with 5.25" floppy and tape would have been like 5. Some games I remember playing... Bruce Lee (classic), Orc Attack, Behind Jaggy Lines, Mercenary. After that we got an Atari ST (Dungeon Master rocked) then STE then our first PC with DOS. Never had an amiga but played it at my friends house sometimes (I remeber Monkey Island for it).
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Anonymous2005-12-05 0:51
POKE 65497,0
1987, with a TRS-80 Color Computer 2. With the 64k upgrade.
I'm shocked at the lack of trash80/coco love in this thread.
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Anonymous2005-12-05 1:07
I almost bought a MicroVAX on ebay last week.
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Anonymous2005-12-05 1:33
286 FTW! Ernie's Big Splash was the shit back in the day.
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Anonymous2005-12-05 2:13
Osborn 1. 52 character screen. Weight 11 lbs. But a major breakthrough nonetheless.
If any of your started with a Vic 20, I wrote a few games for it.
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anonymous2005-12-05 2:47
my first computer experience was with an old Apple computer, round about 1991. i was in kindergarden and enjoyed playing the classic Oregon Trail game whenever i had the chance. cant think of many more games condoned by a school that allows you to kill wildlife
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Anonymous2005-12-05 2:50
I found a C=64 that some jackass was throwing away - seems to be in working order but I don't have a monitor nor the time right now to hunt one down.
I also found a C=64 floppy disk unit as well.
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VF-192005-12-05 6:54
First computer experience was this Radio Shack machine my Dad bought. Had a tape drive and a floppy. Played Xaxxon to death on it. First personal computer (at 5 years young) was an 8086 "portable" (a really large briefcase that folded out to reveal the floppy monitor, and keyboard, weighed about 25 pounds). Simcity... ahh, those were the days, when DOS actually worked, and windows was an option!
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Anonymous2005-12-05 9:02
Ericsson 80x88 with the gas-tube displays, the yellow stuff :)
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Anonymous2005-12-05 9:35
A terminal connected to a 386 server running SCO Lunix on 1988, I was 7 I think.
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Anonymous2005-12-05 15:44
Apple IIGS, would've been about 1986 I suppose...
5.25" floppy, I made surprisingly good use out of that machine for such a small child. I remember playing carmen sandiego games as a child on that thing.
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Anonymous2005-12-05 17:47
I feel like such a young'n, despite probably having 10 years on the average poster.
born 1966, first computer, and in fact only computer until I built my gaming rig, I got in 1990. Win 3.1, 5 GB, something like 64 ram I think...company paid for and made it, but they closed our branch down and we got to take our computers home.
Good thing too, if they saw the amount of crap I crammed in there I probably would've been in trouble. Introducing me to AOL when they went online in I think '92...I spent 25% of my time downloading games/warez/share, and 45% playing them. and they were never the wiser. I came so late to the party, but still seemed so "hip." Like the older russian guy in SLC punk. *
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Anonymous2005-12-05 22:24
People posting in this thread should mention their age, too
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Anonymous2005-12-05 23:14
born 1977. first got into computers when i was around 6, iirc, with a Commodore 64 (with a Defender cart being my first very own computer game at the same time). shortly after the C=64 was released, early '83 i think. learned how to program shortly thereafter, and was fluent in commodore BASIC before i was 8.
first computer i actually owned all for myself was a 25MHz 486 i bought second hand for $300CA (included a computer desk and monitor). bought it as an alternative to the family computer which i could only get on about a third of the time without pissing someone off. this was back in '97, i believe. it also ended up being my first linux system shortly thereafter (Mandrake, i think. maybe Red Hat.).
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Anonymous2005-12-06 0:10
First compy used: Apple ][+, 1977, at school. (born in '71.) Favorite games: pacman and sabotage. I learned Integer Basic, Applesoft Basic, and a handful of ML through monitor. Extremely fun to hack, and educational.
First compy owned: Commodore 64, 1986. Two disk drives, joystick, mouse, GEOS, loads of games, a few compilers... later got a 1581 disk drive, geoPublish, and GEOS compilers. Incredibly fun to use and program.
Worst compy owned: anything with Windows (five PCs: 8088, 386, 486, K6-II, Celeron, Celeron. 1986-2005). Buggier than even my worst Basic spaghetti code, capable of making a 1 GHz PC slower than a 1 MHz C64, and needs too much time, money, and effort to make as capable. No fun to use at all, impossible to write good programs on.
In all the days I use my C64, not a day goes by that I don't *swear* by it. In all the days I use a Windows PC, not a day goes by that I don't swear *at* it.
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Anonymous2005-12-06 1:30
If you hate windows so much, >>26, why not install another OS?
Or just buy a Mac?
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262005-12-06 2:35
>>27
No $$$, 'Net access, or free time at the time. I finally put Linux on my computers in '02. Until then, I used my 64 whenever I could, and a Win95 book whenever it was that or nothing. The only thing I have against Macs are the cost, except perhaps for the Mini. Oh, and I also miss the NeXTCube and NeXTStation: my first exposure to Unix, and wonderful machines for the day, but proof that Steve Jobs is color-blind.
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Anonymous2005-12-06 11:41
Hmmm.... let me remember... first keyboard I laid my fingers on belonged to a Commodore 8016 and a Commodore PET 2001... back in ye good olde times I owned a Commodore 64, than an Amiga 500.
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Anonymous2005-12-06 15:07
>>27
Probably because he wouldn't know how to use it, considering he managed to make NT-based Windows unstable and slow. I suggest he gets a Mac and doesn't try to mess with the OS.
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Anonymous2005-12-06 15:38
You know, bitching at windows while using linux is kinda...
Having used linux for the past decade, it's gone from love -> hate. Thinking that linux is some sort of charm while bitching about windows is totally disingenuous.
Server? Fine. Desktop? M$ is teh sux0r amirite lol?
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CCFreak2K!mgsA1X/tJA2005-12-06 21:28
I started on an Apple Macintosh Quadra 610, on an ISDN line, 64K I think. The ISDN line was paid in full by TRW. Or maybe it was ESL back then.
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Anonymous2005-12-06 23:04
The first time I touched a computer: approx 6pm on December 23rd, 1979, when I was 8 --- my Mum was taking us Xmas shopping, and the Newcastle Microcomputer club has a display going at Kotara Garden City that included an Apple][ playing Sabotage! ... Later that same evening, I met a TRS80 Model 1, and got to type "WHAT IS YOUR NAME", only to get a "?SN ERROR"-- I thought it was because I didn't have the "?" to make it a question..
Soon afterwards, my Mum's work at a large caryard made her the system administrator for a DG NOVA (she did FORTRAN at Uni..) I was never allowed to get too near to it. :(
When I started high-school in 1983, on the second or third day, I heard there was COMPUTERS at this school that students could USE!!! I immediately hunted down the kid that I was told knew about it-- Peter Cousins-- another Year 7 student, and we went off to discover the 2 Apple][ machines (a ][+, and a europlus, each with dual disk-drives!), and by hanging around the senior students for long enough and borrowing books from the library, we figured it all out. :) Cuzzo became the school's leading warez games king, and I became its best programmer. :)